January 2010

01/19/2010

Blackwater/Xe and other "murder for hire" companies are marketing their "services"--like “High Threat terminations” and "dealing with worker unrest,”-- in Haiti.

“All Protection and Security has made a commitment to the Haitian
community and will provide professional security against any threat to
prosperity in Haiti,” the site proclaims.
“Job sites and supply convoys will be protected against looters and
vandals. Workers will be protected against gang violence and
intimidation. The people of Haiti will recover, with the help of the
good people from the world over.” [Haiti-Security.com]

On January 15, a Florida based company called All Pro Legal Investigations registered the URL Haiti-Security.com. It is basically a copy of the company’s existing US website but is now targeted for business in Haiti, claiming the “purpose of this site is to act as a clearinghouse for information seekers on the state of security in Haiti.”

The company boasts that it has run “Thousands of successful missions
in Iraq & Afghanistan.” As for its personnel, “Each and every
member of our team is a former Law Enforcement Officer or former
Military service member,” the site claims.
“If Operator experience, training and qualifications matter, choose All
Protection & Security for your high-threat Haiti security needs.”

Blackwater/Xe, a corporation that rents out "para-military" killers, who are not subject to national military rules, and ignore international law, is a threat to democracy.

They have been wantonly killing civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere and they have been accused of false flag operations, where they set off a bomb in a crowded market place with the expectation that their "terror attack" will be blamed on "insurgents," "jihadis," or al-Qaeda. They are likely the culprits in the recent atrocity in Afghanistan, where school children were handcuffed and shot in the head.

Dick Cheney created these "murder for hire" corporations to "outsource killing" and exempt them, and the Vice President and Rumsfeld, from any prosecution. These murderers believe they are above all laws; they must be stopped.

According to reports, they have already arrived in Yemen and Somalia: are these amoral para-military prostitutes loyal to the United States, the Pentagon, or, their pimp, Blackwater/Xe?

If the Federal governmen t hired these mercenaries to control US citizens, would the local law enforcement personnel and and National Guard soldiers join them against civilians in the United States?

OR will our National Guard troops support us? Would they remain loyal to the Constitution and their fellow citizens and protect their neighbors from these hired killers? During the American Revolution, the British hired hessians to do their killing and the patriots shot them dead.

following from: Countercurrents.org

In The Prince,
Machiavelli (May 1469 - June 1527) wrote:

"The mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and
dangerous, and if anyone supports his state by the arms of mercenaries, he will
never stand firm or sure, as they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline,
faithless, bold amongst friends, cowardly amongst enemies, they have no fear of
God, and keep no faith with men."

In an August 11, 2009 Global Research article
titled, "The Real Grand Chessboard and the Profiteers of War," Peter Dale Scott
called Private Military Contractors (PMCs) businesses "authorized to commit
violence in the name of their employers....predatory bandits (transformed into)
uncontrollable subordinates....representing....public power in....remote
places."

True enough. Those performing security functions
are paramilitaries, hired guns, unprincipled, in it for the money, and might
easily switch sides if offered more. Though technically accountable under
international and domestic laws where they're assigned, they, in fact, are
unregulated, unchecked, free from criminal or civil accountability, and are
licensed to kill and get away with it.

Political and institutional expediency
affords them immunity and impunity to pretty much do as they please and be
handsomely paid for it.

As
vice-president, GHW Bush applied it to intelligence, and then defense secretary
Dick Cheney hired Brown and Root Services (now KBR, Inc., a former Halliburton
subsidiary) to devise how to integrate private companies effectively into
warfare.

The Current Proliferation of
PMCs

According to PW Singer, author of "Corporate
Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry:"

Included are companies offering "the functions of
warfare....spanning a wide range of activities. They perform everything from
tactical combat to consulting (to) mundane logistics....The result is that (the
industry) now offers every function that was once limited to state
militaries."

Warfare, in part, has been privatized so that "any
actor in the global system can access these skills and functions simply by
writing a check."

In the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon employed one
PMC operative per 50 troops. For the 1999 Yugoslavia conflict, it was one for
every 10, and by the 2003 Iraq War, PMCs comprised the second largest force
after the US military.

So wherever they're deployed, they're menacing and
feared with good reason even though many of their member firms belong to
associations like the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA) and the
British Association of Private and Security Companies (BAPSC). Their conduct
codes are mere voluntary guidelines that at worst subject violators to
expulsion.

The U.S. military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's
contention that Blackwater was at fault in the shooting incident in Nisoor
Square, in which hospital records say at least 14 people were killed and 18 were
wounded.

"It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong," said the U.S.
military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident
remains the subject of several investigations. "The civilians that were fired
upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. And none of the IP or
any of the local security forces fired back at them," he added, using a military
abbreviation for the Iraqi police. The Blackwater guards appeared to have fired
grenade launchers in addition to machine guns, the official
said.

When IPOA wanted Blackwater USA investigated
(later Blackwater Worldwide, now Xe - pronounced Zee) for slaughtering 28 Iraqis
in Al-Nisour Square in central Baghdad and wounding dozens more on September 16,
2007, the company left the association and set up its own, the Global Peace and
Security Operations Institute (GPSOI), with no conduct code besides saying:

"Blackwater desires a safer world though practical
application of ideas that create solution making a genuine difference to those
in need (by) solving the seemingly impossible problems that threaten global
peace and stability."

Blackwater, now Xe, makes them far worse as
unchecked hired guns. Wherever deployed, they operate as they wish, take full
advantage, and stay unaccountable for their worst crimes, the types that would
subject ordinary people to the severest punishments.

In his book "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's
Most Powerful Mercenary Army," Jeremy Scahill described a:

"shadowy mercenary company (employing) some of the
most feared professional killers in the world (accustomed) to operating without
worry or legal consequences....largely off the congressional radar. (It has)
remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus" to practice
violence with impunity, including cold-blooded murder of non-combatant
civilians.

Employing Mercenaries - A Longstanding
Practice

Called various names, including mercenaries,
soldiers of fortune, dogs of war, and Condottieri for wealthy city states in
Renaissance Italy, employing them goes back centuries. In 13th century BC Egypt,
Rameses II used thousands of them in battle. Ancient Greeks and Romans also used
them. So didn't Alexander the Great, feudal lords in the Middle Ages, popes
since 1506, Napoleon, and George Washington against the British in America's war
of independence even though by the early 18th century western states enacted
laws prohibiting their citizens from bearing arms for other nations. Although
the practice continued sporadically, until more recently, private armies fell
out of favor.

Defining a Mercenary

Article 47 in the 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva
Conventions provides the most widely, though not universally, accepted
definition, based on six criteria, all of which must be met.

"A mercenary is any person who:

(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in
order to fight in an armed conflict;

(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the
hostilities:

(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities
essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on
behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess
of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the
armed forces of the Party;

(d) is neither a national of a Party to the
conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;

(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party
to the conflict; and

(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a
Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces."

This Article's Focus and Some
Background

This article covers the modern era of their
resurgence, specifically America's use of private military contractors (PMCs)
during the post-Cold War period. However, the roots of today's practice began in
1941 in the UK under Captain David Stirling's Special Air Service (SAS), hired
to fight the Nazis in small hard-hitting groups. In 1967, he then founded the
20th century's first private military company, WatchGuard International.

Others followed, especially during the 1980s
Reagan-Thatcher era when privatizing government services began in earnest.

They've also been used in numerous civil wars
globally in nations like Angola, Sierra Leone, the Balkans throughout the 1990s,
Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere. From 1990 - 2000, they participated in 80
conflicts, compared to 15 from 1950 - 1989.

Singer cites three reasons why, combined into "one
dynamic:"

1. Supply and demand

Since the Cold War ended in 1991, the US military
downsized to about two-thirds its former size, a process Dick Cheney, as defense
secretary, called BRAC - Base Realignment and Closure, followed by privatizing
military functions. But given America's permanent war agenda, the Pentagon
needed help, especially because of the proliferation of small arms, over 550
million globally or about one for every 12 human beings, and their increased use
in local conflicts.

2. Changes in the conduct of war

Earlier distinctions between soldiers and
civilians are breaking down, the result of low-intensity conflicts against drug
cartels, warlords and persons or groups aggressor nations call "terrorists," the
same ones they call "freedom fighters" when on their side for imperial
purposes.

High-intensity warfare also changed, so sailors
aboard guided missile ships, for example, serve along side weapons and
technology company personal, needed for their specialized expertise.

In addition, the combination of powerful weapons
and sophisticated information technology let the Pentagon topple Saddam with
one-fourth the number of forces for the Gulf War. This strategy can be just as
effective in other conventional warfare theaters, depending on how formidable
the adversary, but it doesn't work in guerrilla wars - the dilemma America faces
in Afghanistan, earlier in Iraq and still now as violence there is
increasing.

3. The "privatization revolution"

Singer calls it a "change in mentality, a change
in political thinking, (a) new ideology that" whatever governments can do,
business can do better so let it. The transformation is pervasive in public
services, including more spent on private police than actual ones in America.
And the phenomenon is global. In China, for example, the private security
industry is one of its fastest growing.

By privatizing the military, America pierced the
last frontier to let private mercenaries serve in place of conventional forces.
Singer defines three types of companies:

1. "Military provider firms"

Whatever their functions, they're used tactically
as combatants with weapons performing services formerly done exclusively by
conventional or special forces.

2. Military consulting companies

They train and advise, much the way management
consulting firms operate for business. They also provide personal security and
bodyguard services.

Overall, the industry is huge and growing,
grossing over $100 billion annually worldwide, operating in over 50 countries.
By far, the Pentagon is their biggest client, and in the decade leading up to
the Iraq War, it contracted with over 3,000 PMCs, and now many more spending
increasingly larger amounts.

A single company, Halliburton and its divisions
grossed between $13 - $16 billion from the Iraq War, an amount 2.5 times
America's cost for the entire Gulf War. The company profits handsomely because
of America's commitment to privatized militarization. More about it below.

Since 2003, Iraq alone represents the "single
largest commitment of US military forces in a generation (and) by far the
largest marketplace for the private military industry ever."

In 2005, 80 PMCs operated there with over 20,000
personnel. Today, in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, it's grown exponentially,
according to US Department of Defense figures - nearly 250,000 as of Q 3, 2009,
mostly in Iraq but rising in Afghanistan to support more troops.

Not included are PMCs working for the State
Department, 16 US intelligence agencies, Homeland Security, other branches and
foreign governments, commercial businesses, and individuals, so the true total
is much higher. In addition, as Iraq troops are drawn down, PMCs will replace
them, and in Afghanistan, they already exceed America's military force.

According to a September 21, 2009 Congressional
Research Service (CRS) Report, as of June 2009, PMCs in Afghanistan numbered
73,968, and a later year end 2009 US Central Command figure is over 104,000 and
rising. The expense is enormous and growing with CRS reporting that supporting
each soldier costs $1 million annually, in large part because of rampant waste,
fraud and abuse, unmonitored and unchecked.

With America heading for 100,000 troops on the
ground and more likely coming, $100 billion will be spent annually supporting
them, then more billions as new forces arrive, and the Iraq amount is even
greater - much, or perhaps most, from supplemental funding for both theaters on
top of America's largest ever military budget at a time the country has no
enemies except for ones it makes by invading and occupying other countries and
waging global proxy wars.

Regulating PMCs

Efforts to do so have been fruitless despite the
General Assembly trying in 1989 through the International Convention against the
Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It took over a decade
to get the required 22 signatories, but neither America or other major PMC users
were included.

An earlier effort also failed when in 1987 a
special UN rapporteur was established to examine "the use of mercenaries as a
means of impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination."
It was largely ignored, and a 2005 effort won't likely fare better under a
working group for the same purpose. Nor will industry associations functioning
more for show than a commitment to end bad practices that will always go on as
long as rogue firms like Xe and others like it are employed.

Singer noted how PMCs have been involved in some
of the most controversial aspects of war - from over-billing to ritual slaughter
of unarmed civilians. Yet none of them have ever been prosecuted, convicted or
imprisoned, an issue Singer cites in listing five "dilemmas:"

1. Contractual ones - hiring PMCs for their
skills, to save money, or do jobs nations prefer to avoid. Yet unaccountability
injects a "worrisome layer of uncertainty" into military operations, opening the
door to unchecked abuses.

2. PMCs constitute an unregulated global business
operating for profit, not peace and security when skilled killers are hired -
former Green Berets, Delta Force soldiers, Navy Seals, and foreign ones like the
British SAS.

3. Conducting public policy as serious as war
through private means is worrisome, including covert operations to avoid
official oversight and legislative constraints.

4. Moving private companies into the military
sphere creates disturbing gray areas. PMCs can't be court martialed, and
international law doesn't cover them. Further, operating in war zones makes them
even less accountable as who can prove their actions weren't in self-defense,
even against unarmed civilians.

5. Increasing PMC use also "raises some deep
questions about the military itself." How do you retain the most talented combat
troops when they can sell their skills for far greater pay? Also consider the
uniqueness of the military.

"It is the only profession that has its own court
system, its own laws; the only profession that has its own grocery stores and
separate bases;" its own pensions and other benefits for those staying around
long enough to qualify. So what happens when it's transformed into a business
with profit the prime motive? Simple - more wars, greater profits. The same idea
as privatizing prisons - more prisoners, fatter bottom line.

Another consideration is also worrisome. Given
America's imperial ambitions, global dominance, permanent war agenda, and
virtual disregard for the law, public distrust is growing for politicians who
never earned it in the first place.

Given the Pentagon's transformation since 1991,
the number of services it privatized, and America's permanent war agenda, what
will conditions be in another decade or a few years? How much more prominent
will PMCs be? How much more insecurity will result? How soon will it be before
hordes of them are deployed throughout America as enforcers in civilian
communities outside of conflict zones, with as much unaccountability here as
abroad? What will the nation be like if it happens?

Halliburton/KRB

In his book, "Halliburton's Army: How a
Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War,"
Pratap Chatterjee describes a company tainted by bribes, kickbacks,
inefficiency, corruption and fraud, exploitation of workers as near-slaves, and
other serious offenses, yet operates with impunity and sticks taxpayers with
many billions of dollars in charges.

Before spun off in 2007, KBR won the bulk of Iraq
contracts as part of Halliburton, many of them no-bid. Earlier from 2002 to
March 2003, it was involved with the Pentagon in planning the war and its role
once it ended - the one co-founder George Brown claimed Lyndon Johnson described
in the 1960s as a "joint venture (in which) I'm going to take care of politics
and you're going to take care of the business side of it." Fast forward, and
nothing's changed.

In a February 19, 2009 article, titled "Inheriting
Halliburton's Army," Chatterjee writes how their employees are in "every nook
and cranny of US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan," yet stateside operations yield
additional billions in revenue. He describes their "shoddy electrical work,
unchlorinated shower water, overcharges for trucks sitting idle in the desert,
deaths of KRB (its former subsidiary) employees and affiliated soldiers in Iraq,
alleged million-dollar bribes accepted by KBR managers, and billions of dollars
in missing receipts, among the slew of other complaints" that got wide publicity
since the beginning of the Iraq war.

He explains that since it got a 2001 contract to
supply US forces in combat theaters, KBR grossed over $25 billion. It then got
new contracts under Obama, leading Chatterjee to ask: "How did the US military
become this dependent on one giant company?"

Tracing its history since the 1960s, he noted its
connection to Lyndon Johnson, its profiteering from the Vietnam War, again under
Ronald Reagan, then more under GHW Bush and Dick Cheney, his defense secretary
who accelerated the Pentagon's privatization agenda, then headed the company as
CEO. Bill Clinton continued it, hiring KBR in 1994 to build bases in Bosnia,
later Kosovo, and run their daily operations.

Then under Bush/Cheney, outsourcing accelerated
further, so today there's one KBR worker for every three US soldiers in Iraq.
They build base infrastructure and maintain them by handling all their duties -
feeding soldiers, doing their laundry, performing maintenance, and virtually all
other non-combat functions.

Despite its abusive practices, KBR is such an
integral part of the Pentagon that Chatterjee asks "could Obama dismiss (its)
army, even if he wanted to?" Not at all so expect KRB's $150 billion 10-year
LOGCAP contract (the Army's Logistics Augmentation Program - beginning September
20, 2008) to continue, and KBR's army to remain on the march reaping billions
from the public treasury as the nation's largest PMC war profiteer.

PMCs Under Obama

In February 2007, Senator Obama introduced the
Transparency and Accountability in Military Security Contracting Act as an
amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, requiring federal agencies to
report to Congress on the numbers of security contractors employed, killed,
wounded, and disciplinary actions taken against them. Referred to the Senate
Armed Services Committee, it never passed.

Then in February 2009 as president, Obama
introduced reforms to reduce PMC spending and shift outsourced work back to
government. He also promised to improve the quality of acquisition workers -
government employees involved in supervising and auditing billions of dollars
spent monthly on contracts. Even so, PMCs are fully integrated into national
security and other government functions, as evidenced by the massive numbers in
Iraq and Afghanistan alone.

Earlier, PMCs were at times used in lieu of US
forces. As mentioned above, they helped General Washington win America's war of
independence. Later the war of 1812, and in WW II the Flying Tigers fought the
Japanese for China's Chiang Kai-Shek. In the 1960s and early 1970s, they were
prominent nation builders in South Vietnam. From 1947 through 1976, the CIA's
Southern Air Transport performed paramilitary services, including delivering
weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

In 1985, the Army's LOGCAP was a precursor for
more extensive civilian contractor use in wartime and for other purposes. It's
involved in pre-planned logistics and engineering or construction contracts,
including vehicle maintenance, warehousing, base building abroad, and a range of
non-combat functions on them.

The Clinton administration's "Reinventing
Government" initiative promised to downsize it by shifting functions to
contractors as a way cut costs and improve efficiency. Later under George Bush,
private companies got to compete for 450,000 government jobs, and in 2001, the
Pentagon's contracted workforce exceeded civilian DOD employees for the first
time.

In 2002, under Army Secretary Thomas White, the
military planned to increase its long-term reliance on contracted workers, a
plan known as the "Third Wave" after two earlier ones. Its purposes were to free
up military manpower for the global war on terror, get non-core products and
services from private sources so Army leaders could focus on their core
competencies, and support Bush's Management Agenda.

In April 2003, the initiative stalled when White
resigned, among other reasons for a lack of basic information required to
effectively manage a growing PMC force, then estimated to be between 124,000 -
605,000 workers. Today, more precise figures are known and for what functions,
but a lack of transparency and oversight makes it impossible for the public,
Congress, the administration, or others in government to assess them with regard
to cost, effectiveness, their services, whether government or business should
perform them, and their effect on the nation for good or ill, with strong
evidence of the latter.

The 2008 Montreux Document is an agreement
obligating signatories with regard to their PMCs in war zones. Seventeen nations
ratified it, including America, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada
and China, pledging to promote responsible PMC conduct in armed conflicts.
Divided in two sections, its first one covers international laws binding on
private contractors, explains states can't circumvent their obligations by using
them, requires they take appropriate measures to prevent violations, address
them responsibly when they do, and take effective steps to prevent future
occurrences.

The second section lists 70 practices for helping
countries fulfill their legal obligations, including not using PMCs for
activities requiring force, implementing effective control, using surveillance
and sanctions in case of breaches, and regulating and licensing contracted
companies, that in turn, must train their personnel to observe the rules of law.

Given the obvious conflicts of interest,
self-regulation won't work. Unchecked, combatant PMCs are accountable only to
themselves, operating secretly outside the law - for the Pentagon as an imperial
tool.

Given Obama's permanent war agenda and how
entrenched PMCs have become, expect little constructive change, save for
tinkering around the edges and regular rhetorical promises, followed by new
fronts in the war on terror and even greater numbers civilians and soldiers for
them.

Then add hundreds more billions diverted from
vital homeland needs to enrich thousands of war profiteers, addicted to
sure-fire blood money, and expecting plenty more ahead. They'll get it unless
enough public outrage demands an end to this madness before it's too late to
matter.

"The legislation would prohibit the use of private
contractors for military, security, law enforcement, intelligence, and armed
rescue functions unless the President tells Congress why the military is unable
to perform those functions. It would also increase transparency over any
remaining security contracts by increasing reporting requirements and giving
Congress access to details about large contracts."

Meanwhile on January 12, 2010, a coalition of
groups opposed to Blackwater called on Congress to investigate why criminal
charges against the company were dismissed on grounds of prosecutorial
misconduct. They also want to "pull the funding on war profiteers like
Blackwater (and) stop them for good."

It's a tall order given how entrenched they are
and expanding. In Haiti, for example, reports say Blackwater is there providing
security, an indication perhaps of more contingents to follow, from them and
other armed contractors, "authorized to commit violence in the name of their
employers."

Stephen Lendman is a Research
Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and
can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
and listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday
at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests
on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

If you thought that closing Gitmo would finally end that
disgusting era, when Cheney and Rumsfeld denied habeas corpus rights to
prisoners and tortured them mercilessly, look here:they were also hiding 645 detainees at "Afghan Guantanamo"--the US military base
in Bagram.

The
Pentagon has for the first time made public the names of 645 detainees
held at the US military base in
Bagram, Afghanistan, a US human rights
group said Saturday.

The American Civil Liberties
Union said the list of names, dated September 22, 2009, was released by
the US defense secretary after the group filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The list is the first official information about the detainees held in a
prison sometimes referred to as the "Afghan Guantanamo," but it was released in
a heavily-censored form, the ACLU said.

"Vital information including their citizenship, how long they have been held,
in what country they were captured and the circumstances of their capture has
been redacted," the group said in a statement.

The ages of the detainees was also not provided.

"Hundreds of people have languished at Bagram for years in horrid and abusive
conditions, without even being told why they're detained or given a fair chance
to argue for release," said ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit seeking the information in September 2009, after an
April request was rejected by the Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency.

Since US President Barack
Obama announced his administration would work to close the prison at
Guantanamo, where
198 detainees remain, human rights
groups have turned their attention to the US prison at Bagram.

NATO and Afghanistan signed an agreement in
early January authorizing the transfer of the prison to Afghan authorities,
though no date was set for the handover.

In September, the Obama administration announced it would allow prisoners at
the facility to view some of the evidence against them and the right to
challenge their detention before limited military tribunals.

In the United States, courts are considering whether non-Afghan detainees who
were captured outside of Afghanistan should have access to the US justice system
to challenge their detention. WASHINGTON (AFP)

01/18/2010

The
outsourcing monster created by Dick Cheney has become a crazed killer.Hiring "mercenaries" to replace U S
troops was invented as a way to dodge the laws that apply to the military,
that outsourcing trick allows "non-standard" soldiers of fortune to kill civilians with
impunity.

When
asked who handcuffed and shot dead school children in Afghanistan, the Pentagon
shrugged and said, 'Not our troops...musta been some "non-standard"
soldiers; with a wink and a nod they indicated that it was Blackwater/Xe
personnel.

Some Americans
fear that, while their local law officers will not harm them, Blackwater/Xe
mercenaries brought in from outside the community will be willing to shoot to
kill and follow orders from the Pentagon.

Who will
shoot the Blackwater/Xe hired killers?

Two senior United States military
officers who arrived at the site soon after the shooting and killing of 27
Iraqi civilians told investigators that they saw no evidence of insurgent activity that would have justified the
shootings, according to the documents.

Three private security guards working
for Blackwater Worldwide who
witnessedthe 2007 episode in Baghdad told a federal grand jury that
they believed the shootings were
unjustified, according to newly unsealed court documents.

The statements were disclosed in a report prepared by prosecutors
in the federal criminal case against five guards from Blackwater, now named Xe
Services, who were charged with manslaughter and weapons charges in connection
with the shootings in Nisour Square in Baghdad.

The charges against the five guards — Paul A. Slough, Nicholas A. Slatten,
Evan S. Liberty, Dustin L. Heard and Donald W. Ball — were dismissed on Dec. 31
by Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court in Washington, who
criticized the prosecutors for their handling of the case. The prosecution’s
report, prepared before the case was dismissed, was unsealed by Judge Urbina on
Friday.

According to the report, the three Blackwater guards who testified — Mark
Mealy, Adam Frost and Matthew Murphy — were members of the same Blackwater
convoy, code-named Raven 23, that was involved in the episode and was on the
scene when the shootings occurred.

According to the prosecution report, Mr. Murphy was the lead turret gunner
in the second vehicle in the convoy, and he testified to the grand jury that he
never saw any threats that day and so he never fired his weapon.

He said he witnessed “unarmed civilians shot and killed who were clearly no
threat to anyone by his fellow Raven 23 members,” the report said.

Mr. Frost, the fire team leader in the second vehicle in the convoy, said
that he was “upset because he had seen Iraqis shot although they posed no
threats.”

Mr. Mealy, the lead turret gunner in the first vehicle of the convoy, also
identified four other Blackwater members who fired their weapons at Iraqis.

One of the senior military officers who testified before the grand jury,
Col. Michael Tarsa, said that he rushed to the scene and came upon a “white Kia
with two corpses inside, decimated with bullet holes and on fire,” the report
said. He also saw other nearby vehicles “riddled with bullet holes,” even
though they were “apparently fleeing the shooting.”

The other officer, Col. David Boslego, arrived quickly and ordered
photographs to be taken of the scene, the report said. The photographs
corroborated Colonel Tarsa’s account, prosecutors said.

In dismissing the case, Judge Urbina criticized the prosecutors for
improperly relying on statements made in exchange for immunity by the
defendants to officials from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security
Service. The prosecution unsuccessfully argued in its report that it had not
relied on those statements and had gathered enough evidence to charge the
guards from other sources. The Washington Post first wrote about the report on
Saturday.

The Justice Department has not yet said whether it will appeal the judge’s
decision to dismiss the criminal case.

Four cigarette makers that control nearly 90 percent of U.S. retail cigarette
sales have until Feb. 19 to persuade the government not to go to the Supreme Court and ask the justices to
step into a landmark 10-year-old racketeering lawsuit.

===== Kicked their butts! =====U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler

In 2006, a judge ruled that the industry concealed the dangers
of smoking for decades. Despite that finding, lower courts have said the
government is not entitled to collect $280 billion in past profits or $14
billion for a national campaign to curb smoking.

"Like father,like son"role modeldie young

As part of any effort to convince the government that it should skip a trip
to the Supreme Court, the tobacco companies may have to drop plans to ask the
justices to overturn the ruling that the industry engaged in racketeering.

MYTH: "American Cowboy" "Real Men Smoke" "and kick butt..."

On behalf of the industry, Washington lawyers Michael Carvin and Miguel Estrada
made their pitch against seeking Supreme Court review in a mid-December meeting at the
Justice Department with Kagan, according to two Washington
attorneys outside the government who are familiar with the meeting in her
office.

In the meeting, Carvin and Estrada left the impression the industry might be
willing to end plans to seek a high
court appeal of its own, if the Justice Department would do the same,
said the Washington attorneys, who spoke on condition of anonymity so that they
could discuss the private meeting with Kagan.

The discussion with Estrada and Carvin resulted in an internal department
meeting a few days later. At this meeting, department lawyers discussed the
possibility of seeking billions of dollars from the industry as part of a
possible negotiated settlement of the suit, according to one of the private
attorneys who learned about this second meeting from participants.

The department, the industry or both could request that the Supreme Court
take the case, while at the same time asking that the case be delayed while the
two sides try to work out a deal.

If the companies also agreed not to seek an appeal, they would be accepting
the findings of U.S. District Judge
Gladys Kessler that they engaged in a scheme to defraud the public by
falsely denying the adverse health
effects of smoking, concealing evidence nicotine is addictive and lying
about their manipulation of nicotine in cigarettes to create addiction. Last
May, a federal appeals court
upheld the findings. The companies then pledged to appeal to the Supreme
Court.

Kessler ordered the companies to make corrective statements about the adverse
health effects of smoking, the addictiveness of smoking and nicotine, the
companies' manipulation of cigarette design and composition to ensure optimum
nicotine delivery and the adverse health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke. These statements
must appear on company Web sites, cigarette packages and newspaper and
television ads.

If Kessler's findings stand, they will set a precedent that other plaintiffs
can use for future suits against the tobacco companies.

"The trial court's findings are devastating to the tobacco industry," said
Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, one of the
public health groups allowed
by Kessler to join the case in 2005 on the side of the Justice Department. "We have urged the department to
go to the Supreme Court to significantly strengthen the remedies, particularly
with regard to funding smoking cessation
and public education."

Tobacco company defendants in the lawsuit are Philip Morris USA
Inc. and its parent company, Altria Group Inc.; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.; British American Tobacco Investments
Ltd.; and Lorillard Tobacco Co. Philip Morris,
R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard account for nearly 90 percent of U.S. retail
cigarette sales. A former U.S. subsidiary of British American Tobacco, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., merged with
Reynolds in 2004.

The way the federal suit has played out contrasts sharply with state action
against the tobacco industry.

The companies have agreed to pay $246 billion over 25 years to settle suits
states brought to recover their costs of treating smoking-related illnesses in
the Medicaid program, which serves the poor and disabled.

01/16/2010

Cerberus Capital, one of Wall Street’s most notoriously ruthless
buyout-rapist firms recently made a $1.8 billion killing on human plasma collected
at the Mexican border from poor people and sold for exorbitant prices to
desperate U.S. patients.

Leading this blood-sucking company are former employees of Presidents Bush: Sec. of Treasury under Bush
43, John Snow, and infamous "Richie Rich" dimwit, Dan "Mr.
Potato Head" Quayle (former US VP) with Bush 41.

The United
States is one of a few nations in the world where companies can sell human plasma for a profit. Capitalism driven by "blood money" and lead by blood-suckers.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Cerberus Capital, one of Wall Street’s most notoriously ruthless buyout-rapist firms recently made a
$1.8 billion killing on its human plasma investment, a company called Talecris.

Talecris was purchased for a mere $82.5 million just four years earlier, meaning
Cerberus made
23 times its investment on human plasma. This was accomplished by the most
savage, heartless means possible: by paying peanuts to impoverished human plasma
donors, who increasingly come from Mexican border towns to blood-pumping
stations set up on the American side, jacking up the price of plasma by
restricting supply (a lawsuit filed by the Federal
Trade Commission accused Cerberus Plasma Holdings of “operat[ing] as an
oligopoly”), and then selling the refined products to the most desperately
ill—patients suffering from hemophilia, severe burns, multiple sclerosis and
autoimmune deficiencies. The products cost so much—one, IVIG (intravenous
immunoglobulin) cost twice the price of gold as of last
summer—that American health insurance companies have been dropping or
denying their policyholders in increasing numbers, endangering untold
numbers of people.

who oversaw the destruction
of America’s economy while serving under Bush from 2003 to 2006, bragging
during his tenure, "We are the envy of the world."

Tomas Asher, chairman of a company that trades in
plasma, described the business this way: "It's like selling hog
bellies or wheat or beef. It gets sold all over."

Profiting from ruined
American lives is nothing new to Cerberus. (The company takes its name from the
legendary three-headed attack dog of Greek legend who guards the gates of Hell,
making sure no condemned soul ever escapes. How appropriate.) Cerberus is the
same shady fund that bought Chrysler and GMAC in 2007 and drove them into the
ground, blamed everything on unions (even after firing 30,000 Chrysler
employees), and dumped the companies onto American taxpayers—but only after
lining up tens of billions in taxpayer-funded bailout funds. Cerberus is led by
some of the most aggressive "free market" Republicans of our time.

Snow bragged again
in 2007 after Cerberus acquired Chrysler, "Over 25 years ago, when Chrysler
faced bankruptcy, it turned to the United States government for assistance.
Today, Chrysler again faces new financial challenges. But it is private
investment stepping in to inject much-needed support." A year later, Snow was
running around Washington begging and screaming for government
handouts.

Joining Snow as international chairman for Cerberus is former
Republican Vice President Dan Quayle, the pampered imbecile

who couldn’t spell “potato” correctly and was never "mis-underestimated."

Two more perfect vampires couldn’t have
been invented than Quayle and Snow for the America of the Bush
Era—peanut-brained, sleazy jerks.

The top vampire in Cerberus is the
fund’s founder, billionaire Stephen Feinberg, a major Republican Party campaign
donor with a hardcore fetish for Harleys and big guns. Supposedly Feinberg was
very uncomfortable with taking all those socialism-esque billions from American
taxpayers. The New York Timesdescribed
him as "a longtime free-market enthusiast and a Republican who never
envisioned himself needing the government for help.”

What Feinberg did envision was callously taking control of Chrysler,
stripping it down and making a killing off of it, as he coldly noted in an early
2008 memo to his investors: “We do not need to be heroes to earn a good return
on the investment in Chrysler," he wrote. "We do not need to transition the car
industry or even to return Chrysler to a much stronger relative position in the
U.S. car market in order to be successful."

After Feinberg siphoned away
billions of taxpayer dollars to pay off his bad investments, he
told reporters, "From the day we bought it, we worked hard to improve it."
Patriotism, not profit, he bleated: “I love this country. I feel it’s been great
to me. I had a great chance."

To understand how Cerberus has profited
from human blood and misery, here's some background: the United States is one of
just a handful of nations around the world where companies can legally pay
humans for their blood and then sell it for a profit. Human plasma is a
particularly valuable component of human blood—it’s harder to extract, and can
be used to manufacture all sorts of expensive therapeutic products. The market
for human plasma products has swelled from just $2 billion in 1988 to over $12
billion per year, and according to a recent Morgan Stanley
report, it’s a fast-growing business.

Despite all the billions that
Wall Street’s vampires earn from plasma, the hapless humans whose veins they
milk make barely a pittance—$30 dollars or so for spending an hour hooked up to
a pumping machine that sucks the blood, sifts out the valuable plasma through a
cold-filtering process and reverse-pumps the debased, icy blood back into the
plasma donor's veins.

It’s such a miserable way to make cash that
Cerberus and its fellow oligopolists have resorted to setting up plasma-sucking
franchises along the U.S.-Mexico border, which have mushroomed like Starbucks
Coffee did in the '90s. In the latter part of 2009 alone, Cerberus-owned
Talecris opened four new plasma-milking factories, plastering the Mexican side
of the border with advertisements promising easy cash, and parking special
plasma-farm buses on the American side of the border to haul their human cargo
to those milking dens not within walking distance of the Rio Grande.

Last
summer, a newspaper reporter followed an unemployed 46-year-old Mexican manager
from his border town to the pumping station in Brownsville, Texas, which has the
highest poverty rate of
any city in America:

"After entering the United States, Castillo
didn’t have to walk far to sell his plasma. A few hundred feet up International
Boulevard from the border, the IBR Plasma building sits on Washington Street,
across from a Duty Free shop. The plasma centre still looks very much like the
bulk second-hand clothing store it used to be, though long white vertical blinds
now hide what goes on behind its windows. Inside, the waiting room is divided
into two sections marked by sheets of paper taped to the wall: one for 'new
donors' and another for 'return donors.' This was Castillo’s first visit, which
meant he could make $30—about 400 Mexican pesos. Signs in Spanish and English
offered an additional $10 to those who recruited other donors.

"Castillo
lay in the big soft chair, he said, while they inserted the needle and his blood
started pumping out. It was cycled into a machine that spun the red cells from
the liquid, as if squeezing whey from curds. The whey, the watery plasma, was
stored in a big plastic bag, while the red blood cells were periodically
reinjected into his arm. While he laid there, he later told me, he wondered
about what his plasma was really worth—and where it would end up. Castillo is an
educated man with a degree in business administration; before coming to
Brownsville he had done some research and found, among other things, that in
Mexico donating plasma for money is illegal—as is the case in much of the rest
of the world."

You might think that America would be ashamed of being the
world’s top vampire nation. But actually, to the faux-market freaks like
Cerberus Capital’s honchos, it just means locking in profits and locking out
competition. Thomas Hecht, who heads a plasma products distribution company in
Montreal, quipped:

"The U.S.
is the OPEC of the plasma business. You know what that stands for: the
Organization of Plasma Exporting Countries."

But Cerberus is more than
just about sucking people’s blood and government handouts. Stephen Feinberg also
loves killing deer. In fact he loves shooting deer so much that, like the old
Gillette commercial, he bought America’s guns 'n’ ammo industry. Two years ago,
Cerberus bought Remington, America’s oldest firearms manufacturer, and since
then they’ve snapped up companies making everything from bullets to silencers,
which they’re combining into a new firearms monolith
called Freedom Group. The free-marketeers at Cerberus are all about freedom.

Luckily for Cerberus, weapons are “flying off the store shelves,” thanks
to all the paranoia about Obama "socialism," fed by all the bailout money that
rightwing billionaires like Cerberus have looted. Sales have also been boosted
by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—in other words, more government handouts for
the billionaires, now that they own the guns ‘n’ ammo business. It’s all going
so well that Cerberus is planning a huge IPO this year for Freedom Group, which
should net another massive payout.

So Cerberus profits on both ends: from
the bailouts, and from the backlash against bailouts; from the wars against
Muslim terrorists, and from the paranoia back home about an alleged
socialist-Muslim-terrorist president.

Bird
smuggling in Asia could be a breeding ground for the "Super
Flu"--born from the mixing of the Bird flu (H5N1) and Swine flu (H1N1).

HONG KONG
(Reuters) - Disease experts in Southeast Asia will map out key poultry
smuggling routes, especially along Cambodia's long border with Thailand
and Vietnam, in a move to prevent the spread of the H5N1 bird flu virus
in the region.

Researchers from China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam
met in the Chinese city of Kunming to discuss ways to control the
spread of the virus, which kills 60 percent of the people it infects.

Even though H5N1 transmission between people is weak, experts say it
continues to pose a risk especially if it gets mixed with the now
dominant H1N1 swine flu virus. Such a hybrid may then be both deadly
and easily transmissible among people.

"In Cambodia, illegal or informal trade occurs along its long border
with Thailand and Vietnam. There is that informal trade, not just in
birds, but eggs and other poultry products, smuggling," said Khieu
Borin, director of Cambodia's Center for Livestock and Agriculture
Department.

"It can be in small or large numbers ... but because poultry has
(can be infected by) H5N1, so smuggling of fighting cocks or chickens
can carry H5N1, there will be some risk," he told Reuters in a
telephone interview.

While scarce media attention has been paid in the last year to H5N1,
there have been outbreaks of the disease in birds and it has killed
people in China, Egypt, Indonesia and Vietnam.

"Our China colleagues found that bar-headed geese fly from China to
India and found records of outbreaks in poultry along the flyway. This
suggests the role of these birds in spreading the virus along the
flyway," said Witthawat Wiriyarat, a veterinarian and virologist with
Thailand's Mahidol University.

"There are opportunities to meet other birds along the pathway like
in paddy fields and wetlands. If one bird can release the virus into
the environment, other animals can get it and spread it to poultry,"
Wiriyarat told Reuters.

One worry often cited by experts is Indonesia's insistence on not
sharing virus samples. Researchers need to study the virus to track its
molecular changes, which can influence its behavior.

Friday, Indonesia's health minister Endang Sedyaningsih said the
country will continue to hold back samples until it secured guarantees
from richer nations and drugmakers that poor countries get access to
affordable vaccines derived from their samples.

"We will still insist that the responsibility to share virus should
be at the same line with receiving the benefit from that," she told
foreign journalists in Jakarta.

January 15, 2010 "LA County Nonpartisan Examiner" -- The UN's Representative to Afghanistan confirmed the Afghan government’s investigative conclusions that US troops handcuffed and then executed eight students
enrolled in grades 6 through 10 in a night raid on December 27, 2009.

The US military and NATO responded the troops involved were
non-official. The most likely source of para-military “non-official”
troops in Afghanistan is Blackwater/Xe.

President
Hamid Karzai demanded arrest of the US troops engaged in the break-in
and mafia-style execution of their children. The US responded to the
Afghan demand of January 1 by rejecting the findings of the Afghan
government and UN with a vague promise of their own self-investigation
at some later date.

Dave Lindorff caught corporate media in repulsive disinformation by quoting the NY Times titling and introducing this incident as:

Attack Puts Afghan Leader and NATO at Odds

KABUL,
Afghanistan -- The killing of at least nine men in a remote valley of
eastern Afghanistan by a joint operation of Afghan and American forces
put President Hamid Karzai and senior NATO officials at odds on Monday
over whether those killed had been civilians or Taliban insurgents.

FBI Cointel Pro intelligence operation and the PsyOps are
presenty using “Character Profiling” software to analyse the political stance
of YOU and members of your family on FACEBOOK, MYSPACE and other social media
websites.

Fox News is
neither fair or balanced, but frequently inaccurate.Here are the latest misrepresentations:

Fox & Friends off on proposed bank tax by a factor of 100
On January 15, Fox & Friends
falsely reported that President Obama promoted "a 15 percent tax on the
banks" for the purpose of recouping taxpayer losses resulting from
Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) investments. In fact, the fee
Obama proposed would be "assessed at approximately 15 basis points
(0.15 percent) of covered liabilities per year" for financial companies
with more than $50 billion in assets.

Fox Nation, Hoft falsely claim Coakley said "Catholics" shouldn't work "in emergency rooms"
Fox Nation and Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoft have seized on comments
made by Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley during
a January 14 radio interview to falsely claim that Coakley said "devout
Catholics" should not "work in emergency rooms." In fact, as the
context of Coakley's remarks makes clear, she was discussing
individuals who would refuse to provide certain emergency medical
procedures and treatments -- including emergency contraception -- to
patients on the grounds of their religious beliefs, not all "devout Catholics."

"Invasion U.S.A."! Tracking the Interpol conspiracy theory through right-wing media
Right-wing media figures including Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, Rush
Limbaugh, and Chuck Norris have been running with debunked conspiracy
theories that President Obama has ceded U.S. sovereignty and given
Interpol the right to circumvent the U.S. Constitution and even to
arrest U.S. citizens. In fact, as even some conservative commentators
have noted in debunking the conspiracy theory, Interpol first received
immunity under President Ronald Reagan, that Obama's action does not
cede sovereignty, that Interpol has been given the same immunity as the
International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Pacific
Halibut Commission, and that Interpol has not gained the right to
arrest U.S. citizens.

Using false claim, Fox & Friends attacks health care deal as "bribe" to unions
On January 15, Fox & Friends misrepresented
the details of the recent health care negotiation relating to proposals
to taxing high-cost "Cadillac" health care plans by falsely claiming
that the proposal to "eliminate from any taxing dental and vision"
policies applied only to union members, and Fox & Friends repeatedly
claimed that the concessions won during the negotations were "a bribe"
to unions. In fact, most of the negotiations, including the dental and
vision exemptions, apply to all workers -- not just union workers --
and the extension given to union members regarding the implementation
of the excise tax was reportedly made in order to allow unions time to
negotiate less expensive plans for their workers.

FOLLOW-UP REPORT: Beck and Hannity again devoted little coverage to earthquake in Haiti
After receiving criticism for giving little coverage to the devastating
earthquake in Haiti, Fox News' three top-rated programs for 2009
devoted scant coverage to the disaster for a second night -- a combined
total of 20 minutes and 40 seconds on January 14 -- while MSNBC's three
top-rated shows devoted more than an hour and 45 minutes to discussing
Haiti. The vast majority of the coverage on Fox's top-rated shows aired
on The O'Reilly Factor; Beck's and Hannity's shows each aired less than four minutes of coverage of the disaster.